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I mean no kind of disrespect to the grandee of Armata or to his DOUBLE, by this classical quotation.

At the conclusion of this laughable adventure, Morven, the father, joined us, and resumed the subject of costume, but upon a very different principle, saying to me gravely, and as if he was not quite pleased," I sent for this young man as an agreeable companion, to shew you the face of the country and its fashions, to which I am now quite unequal; but you must think for yourself on many subjects where his youth and inexperience would lead you far astray: the matter which he has been treating as a mere jest, is of great moment, so much so, that I am anxious to hear how it is considered with you, where wisdom seems to station every thing in its appointed place."'

This detail leads to some strictures on the style of dress in other countries, in which shabby frock-coats and brown scratch-wigs are ridiculed as the costume of judges; while the magnificence and luxury of the city-magistrates in their equipages, dresses, and entertainments, receive a due share of commendation. The remarks on the different importance of dress in a republican and a monarchical form of government, with which this chapter closes, are borrowed, we believe, from Montesquieu.

The next chapter presents an account of the mode of travelling, in a narration of the author's journey from the country-house of his friend Morven to the capital. In the course of this excursion, one of the horses is driven and used so 'unmercifully that he dies on the road; and thus we are brought into a long dissertation on cruelty to animals, in which an account is given of the attempts made at different times to legislate on that subject. The several topics in this discussion, with which readers in this country are sufficiently acquainted, are urged with considerable eloquence: but it contains nothing particularly new or striking. Fox-hunting next comes in for its share of censure; not so much on the score of its cruelty, as on account of the folly of preserving destructive and disgusting animals merely for purposes of sport. "We now returned through the plantations by a different road. I had a fowling-piece with me, the gift of Morven on my first landing, and, seeing an animal run by, with a smell as it passed me that almost produced suffocation, and carrying in his jaws a most beautiful bird, which he was bringing from a field where several bleturs and their young lay torn and mangled, I almost instinctively raised my gun to my shoulder to shoot him: but my companion, holding my arm, cried out with the utmost emotion, "What can you possibly mean? How could we answer for such a dreadful breach of hospitality? It is a great favour, I assure you, to see the place, and would you return it by such an outrage

as

as this?" I was almost petrified with surprise; and, holding fast my nose till the horrid effluvia had evaporated, I asked him how it could possibly be considered as an ungrateful trespass upon the lord of this domain to kill a most offensive wild beast, detected in the murderous act of destroying his property.

"His killing the bleturs," said Cathmor, "was perhaps incor'rect; but it is impossible below the Heavens to have unmixed blessings, and we must be contented to take every good with some alloy of evil. Those animals, though they formerly infested the country, and still do a vast deal of mischief, are nevertheless bred and preserved at a very great expense for our sport, and you may guess how impossible it would be to live without them, when I inform you that we desert all those natural beauties you have been admiring, though we exhaust our fortunes to create and keep them up, that we prefer the frosts and fogs of our rigorous climate to its most delicious sunshine, and abandon even our public councils in the most arduous and critical conjunctures rather than not follow up the closest scent of what so much revolts your ultra mundane nostrils. Do you wonder now," he said, as if he had just finished the demonstration of the plainest problem in Euclid, "do you wonder now, my good friend, that the absent proprietor of this mansion would have started back with horror, when told of the outrage which I so fortunately averted?" I listened to all this with silent composure, and taking out my leathern snuff-box, which had fortunately defied sea-water, and in which there still remained some most excellent rappee for the refreshment of my ultra mundane nostrils, I put out my hand, under the pretence of thanking him, but in fact to take the chance of coming in contact with his pulse, as I was now quite convinced he was MAD. Another organ now came in for a full share of delight; as my ears were saluted on a sudden with a harsh, frightful, and continued yell, such as I had sometimes heard in the woods of America, when fires were lighted to keep back the wolves-so that if I had not known we were in a reclaimed district, I should have expected to be instantly devoured; and the more so as there was not a soul within a mile who could help us. The cause soon became manifest in the persons of near a hundred large animals, more resembling our dog than any other creature, but, instead of being of some one hue, or shades of one, their skins appeared as if they were clouted with patches of different colours, which deformed them not a little. My young companion seemed now quite enchanted, saying, "that as it was a natural propensity always to imagine something beyond realities, he had no doubt that what we were then hearing had given rise to the idea of the Music of the Spheres."I made no answer, heartily wishing myself among them, without any apprehension of that kind of concert.'

Arrived at Swaloal, the friends enter into all the extravagant gaieties and amusements of the place. They first take their morning-airing in the Park, and the author is surprised at finding no company in those parts of it in which the lawns are verdant and the trees luxuriant:

'My

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My young friend smiled at me, saying, I should very soon be gratified with a sight within the Royal precincts, far more inviting, which would fully account for the solitude that had surprized me; he added, that there would be but little difference between being buried under the turf in those solitary recesses which had filled me with such rapture, or rolling over them in the most costly equipage. "Now, now," said he, as we rode onward, " now we come to the scene of true splendour and delight." — At this moment, being still galloping from impatience, we turned short round a dead wall, and the wind being very high, my hat was suddenly beat off, and my head entangled in what I took to be a market-woman's basket of flowers, but which turned out to be only the head-dress of a lady that had been blown out of an open carriage just at the corner we were turning. As soon as this wreck was cleared away by my friend's assistance, and we were preparing to move forwards, we were involved all at once in a seemingly impenetrable whirlwind of dust and gravel, which, when mixed with the smoke driven down from the houses just above us, would have made the blackest assemblage of steam-engines at Birmingham or Wolverhampton appear like the gayest palaces lighted up with gas. Through this dismal medium, my halfextinguished eyes (which so filled with earth in England would have given me a vote for Middlesex) could see only by short snatches sometimes the head of one horse and sometimes the tail of another, with now and then part of a carriage moving on at the pace of a funeral procession, which my friend told me, (for I could see nothing farther,) extended about a mile, but hemmed in on each side, with people riding or rather tumbling over one another. We were now and then stopped besides by vehicles, completely jammed, out of which we could see ladies disengaging themselves, or at least their head-dresses and drapery, looming, as sailors term it, through the mist, and, to keep up the metaphor, flapping against each other like sails and colours in a gale of wind at sea.'

At night they go to several large parties or assemblies; when all the ordinary topics of broken carriages, greased clothes, crowded stair-cases, and heated rooms, are unsparingly introduced. This caricature, we own, is rather too broad for our taste. We see nothing in these accounts which may not be found in twenty novels of modern dates; the wit is farfetched, and not worth the carriage; and the style is low. At the same time we sincerely wish that these strictures, however regarded in Armata, may have the effect of introducing something of a better taste in circles nearer to ourselves, which at present too much resemble the parties and assemblies of the Armatans. *

In the present volume, the author has adopted the name of Armatans instead of Armatians. Would it be too vain in us to imagine that our remark led to this alteration?

In Chapter V. the writer enters into some more private society, which he finds extremely delightful; the men and still more the women who compose it being well informed, and all the domestic arrangements admirable. In the progress of this social intercourse, the author pays a visit to a nobleman residing at an antient mansion, distant only a mile and a half from the metropolis, where he is entertained with dignified hospitality, and meets society which draws from him the following animated portraits:

I remained till it was near morning, and as the conversation became warm upon the interesting subject of Armatan freedomI almost thought I heard the majestic commanding voice of Grey, enlightening our minds and compelling our conviction - the clear and nervous persuasion of Lansdowne the dexterous pith and keen argumentative wit of Tierney- the comprehensive and splendid energy of Brougham-the pure and learned eloquence of Mackintosh and all Scotland personified in the able, acute, powerful, unrelenting demand of Lauderdale upon our well-earned assent to what he said. Nor can I thus call to mind a scene both as to time and place so distant, without reflecting upon the Pleasures of Memory and the delightful talents of the author.'

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We are now, carried to the different theatres and public places in the metropolis, on all of which appropriate observations are made. The traveller is also introduced to the philosophical and literary institutions, and was highly gratified to see the vigorous and capacious mind of man, casting off all the fetters and entanglements which impede it in the search after truth, vindicating the belief that we are formed after the image of God:' but at these he merely glances:

To examine the wonders which chemistry and mechanics had accomplished amongst them would almost demand the skill that gave them birth. They had discovered a power I am quite unable to describe, which, though when left at large insensibly mixes itself with the air, and scarcely lifts a feather in its ascent, would, when imprisoned, unhinge a world for its freedom. Over this subtle and almost omnipotent agent they had gained a complete dominion, and, by a limited and wisely adjusted compression, to give it a safe direction, had obtained a momentum for their most ponderous engines, which neither wind nor water, nor any combinations of matter could have produced.

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May not politicians take a lesson from this? May they not learn from it that there is a restraint of liberty, which cannot safely be imposed; and that man must finally be free to the extent at least which Heaven has appointed for his happiness? Like the constructors of those powerful engines, they may give health and vigour to their governments by the honest and judicious restraints of a liberal system of laws, but, if they transgress that just and necessary dominion, human nature, like the natural elements I have spoken of, will open a passage for itself till the invaded equilibrium is restored.'

Of

Of the sixth chapter, the topics are the laws and religion of the country. On the former, we felt more than usually anxious to hear the supposed noble author's views and opinions; not being quite satisfied of the sincerity of his remark, that neither his education nor the habits of his life in his own country enabled him duly to comprehend' these subjects. He describes the legal constitution of Armata as derived, in its principles, from very high antiquity, for the most part remarkable for simplicity and precision: but its grand peculiarity being that the laws are administered by the people.

The rules which govern property of every description through all its transmissions, and which prescribe the forms of legal remedies when it is invaded, cannot be left to the unsettled judgments of the most enlightened people, without bringing the utmost uncertainty upon all inheritances and titles. These must always be the subjects of written codes, or recorded decisions, which learning alone can treasure up and apply. The rights of individuals also, and their vindications when violated, must upon the same principles be positively defined; else no man could know what were his privileges, or in what manner to assert them. The people of Armata, from the very earliest times, were as well aware of this indispensable division between fact and law, as geographers are of the line by which they divide the hemispheres of our globe, and although invested, in many cases, with the power of deciding upon both, they uniformly respected the rules which referred the law to judicial determination, and the Judges possess all the authorities for protecting their legal jurisdictions.

Crimes, in the same manner, must be defined by positive laws, or known through ancient customs which, by the force of decisions, have become equally positive; as otherwise no man could know what course he might justly pursue, or deliver himself from any snares which might be spread in his path. In this most important branch of jurisprudence, the good sense of the Armatan nation may be said to be summed up.'

These considerations have led to the distinction between Law and Fact; it being the province of the juridical tribunal (or Judges) to decide on the former, and of the popular tribunal (or jury) to determine the latter. That distinction, however, is not applicable to cases in which the fact derives its character of right or wrong from the law, as in the case of libel. The mention of this latter instance introduces an account of the arguments which have lately occurred on the subject of commitment by magistrates, and which must be fresh in the recollection of our readers: but, in Armata, it is the province of the popular tribunal not only to award the ultimate conviction or acquittal of a criminal, but even to decide whether he shall be placed in peril or not; though

the

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